artists Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources

Today kicked off the month-long 30 Characters Challenge, where more than 150 writers and artists are attempting to each create a brand-new character for each day in November. And just a few hours into it, the world has already been introduced to Mike Gallagher’s Roadkill Santa, Red by Tyler James, Daniel Govar’s Chondra Flicker (above) and Captain Cavity by Jess Kirby, among many others.

So basically, Shannon put in 80% of the time even considering I took on publicity and publishing roles. (If I was just doing the writing, it would have been closer to a 90/10% split.)

We’re dividing the money we make 80/20%, but it still feels weird. I mean, I knew it took a long time to draw, but it really takes a long time to draw. This wonky division of labour is something to keep in mind when if you’re ever approaching someone to draw a comic. Even if you’re a slow writer and they’re a fast drawer, you’re still asking them to spend much more time realizing something than you spent creating it. What are you bringing to the project beyond amazing ideas and sparkling prose?

“The image above comes from Amazing Spider-Man #33, 1 of 2 Spider-Man comics that happened to be in my household while growing up (thanks, Dad). Of course, it happened to be one of the greatest Spidey stories ever told, but how was I supposed to know? I couldn’t drive, and I spent what allowance I had on toys. Looking back on the issue now, it’s hard not to draw parallels between Spidey’s dedication and my own work ethic. My adolescent mind was in awe of Spidey’s resolve: he “rested” while being pummeled by Doc Ock’s henchmen in order to gather strength for the final fight. What? Mind: blown. People ask me how I can sit in my room for months on end (the “Bat Cave” and “Fortress of Solitude” comments are incessant). The answer is very simple: I love my job. It’s extremely challenging, but that’s the point. It makes finishing a project feel just like lifting tons of steel machinery off your back to reach the serum that will save your dying Aunt May. Love can give you power you didn’t know you had.”

The Twitterverse was all abuzz yesterday about this post, in which a cynical game producer advises skipping the professionals and trolling Deviantart to find game artists. A few of the comments really set people off:

These guys aren’t used to making a lot of money for their work so they will be more appreciative of the chance even if they are being payed slightly less than what professionals are payed. Second of all, they’re better… Unless you have a specific price you want to pay in mind, ask THEM what they are willing to charge for the project. This usually causes people to give offers that are lower than what you normally pay, and will make them happy.

…

If an artist knows how much their artwork will increase the value of the game they will then feel they deserve that amount of money. This is not how a market economy works, you hire whoever is able to do the best job for the lowest amount of money, anything else is a loss of money on your end.

The original post has garnered 948 comments so far, and there’s a lively discussion going on at The Beat and Colleen Doran’s blog as well. Meanwhile, Bleeding Cool has another cautionary tale, about Bluewater Comics offering an artist two copies of their Justin Bieber comic in exchange for the copyright to the painting he posted on DeviantArt.

It’s been awhile since I posted about Comic Twart, the comic art blog collective that includes Chris Samnee, Mike Hawthorne, Andy Kuhn, Mitch Breitweiser, Tom Fowler, Mitch Gerads and many others. They’ve been regularly posting art based on various themes, so let’s see what they’ve been up to recently …

It’s Shelf Porn time, where we take an intimate look into somebody’s home to see what their books, statues, action figures or even their drawing desk looks like … which is the case with this week’s submission. David Paccia, who works for a financial institution as a Web QA tester, is also an artist and sent in some pictures of his workspace.

We can always use more Shelf Porn, so if you’d like to see your shelves featured here, drop me an email with your write-up and pictures.

After two years of posting their award winners on their website, the Inkwell Awards — which recognize inkers for “their quality work and contribution to the comic book industry and sequential art process” have found a venue to present their awards live. This year they will present their awards at the New England Comic Con in Boston Oct. 1-3.

The award recipients will be presented their trophies and then take part in a Q&A session with fans. Voting for the awards will begin in August.

“Previously the voting has taken place in June but due to the later in the year date of the show event, the ballot will be posted at the site on Aug. 1, so please bookmark the address”, said Bob Almond, founder and director of the Inkwell Awards. “There will be a lot of new developments coming from us this year and having Wizard’s support will be integral to increasing the awareness and exposure of these and future developments of the organization.”

Jim Rugg, Joe Infurnani, Geoff Grogan and several other artists have formed Pood, a new … something. Actually, they’re having a contest now to decide what exactly “pood” is, so head over there and leave your guess.

Over at the relatively new art blog Comic Twart, the various artists who contribute have spent the week drawing DC’s G.I. Robot character, and the results have been pretty awesome. Above is Evan Shaner’s rendition, but head over there to get a look at everyone else’s.

The Emerald City Comicon, scheduled for March 13-14 in Seattle, is once again putting together a charity art book featuring pin-ups of “Monsters & Dames” by some of its very impressive guest list. Proceeds from the book benefit the Seattle Children’s Hospital.

“…the brilliance of her design is so iconic that it’s hard to not want to draw her,” he said on his blog. “I’m sure even if many of you haven’t read the books you’ve seen her image looking at you from a comic store shelf and found it hard not to think ‘What is that?’ Her design makes the comic look like something that has already long been established, even when it was brand new, so I give many kudos to the artist and writer for that.”

The Eclectic Micks are a group of Irish comic artists who have set up a group sketch blog featuring all kinds of cool artwork. And this week, with the launch of IDW’s new Tranformers miniseries, Last Stand of the Wreckers (collective member Nick Roche draws the series), they’ve temporarily changed their name to Eclectic Wrecks and are running sketches of characters from the series. If you’re into the Transformers, go check’em out.